Just an Animator's Apprentice

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Hey everyone! The 9th ballad of my progress journals is now here! In week nine I recorded 18 hours for Studio 3… a lot of week 9 was spent on Final Project, trying to finish the storyboard and animatic. So the chart looks really empty.

For my specialisation I spent a short while on the original test shot, however most of the specialisation working on a new image, looking around for inspiration.

It looks slightly odd, the width of the cane coming off the side of the image is too skinny. I will most likely go over it and fix it in the sketch version rather than going over this black and white version again. I’m hoping that the leading lines follow the road and the direction that the candy canes are pointing.

In my body of work… I added very little to my contest image. Opps. Instead I was doing cross-discipline work for an audio student, designing their cover for their album.

They sent me their set of references and I really liked the geometric shapes. When I asked what kind of shape he wanted he told me a cross/x shape. And then I started drawing.

This is the post-mortem blog post for the World Builder project based on the book “The Horse and His Boy” in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series by C.S. Lewis.

Critical Reflection

This trimester’s main project went by far better than last trimesters, and we managed to finish this project by due date, instead of having to work to the end of trimester to tie up loose ends.

One of the main issues during World Builder was keeping our art styles the same, which was often pointed out until the prescreening of our project, where we had finally kept in a similar style. The cause of this discrepancy is mainly due to opposing personal styles. My teammate is mainly a 3D animator, while my art style is influenced by anime. We had to discover an art style that we would both be able to draw, and then complete many versions of the same art before what we had matched.

The second main issue experienced during World Builder was our ability to connect to Slack to communicate progress. My teammate has dial-up internet which was disconnected everytime someone rings his house, and my internet has a slow upload speed and occasionally drops out on its own at random. There isn’t really anyone at fault here. We could have met up at SAE, however travel times make it more efficient to get as much done as possible at home, post updates to Slack when we could, and then summarise everything done at home once we met face to face at SAE. Neither of us have control over this issue.

For myself, the journey to reach the art style was an interesting one, and I was always fiddling with small details to get it to match my teammate’s. My connnectivity issues meant that I was putting off uploading some documents, that could have been uploaded earlier, until the last week of the project and ended up waiting for several hours instead of half an hour.

As a team, neither of these issues impacted our project much. We were set back slightly while still working on our style and the overall animation timing, however everything was still on track by the end of the project.

Creative Process

This project started with a discussion on which book we would build a world for. We discussed using “Dracula” at first, then we started brainstorming other books we could use, such as “Rangers Apprentice” and the “Amulet” comic series. Eventually we decided upon “The Horse and His Boy”, and about four scenes from the book that we could do.

From this we then had to choose a style, while we began thumbnailing potential scenes. What we wanted in style was something close to the “Harbringers” series by Blizzard Entertainment, with it’s digitally painted scenes that had minimal animation. We were told however that the art style would probably be too hard for us to attempt. We then looked at the “World of Remnant” information series by Rooster Teeth and found a nice mix of simple and detailed. We didn’t want to take all the detail away from the main characters however so we made our style somewhere between “Harbringers” and “World of Remnant”.

When we finished thumbnailing, we then moved onto our storyboard. The story started off with two scenes, the first character overlooking the city, and the second character watching the parade. This then changed to three scenes, the overlook, a reveal of the city, and the parade. At one point we wanted the first character getting kidnapped and the second character jumping onto the litter parading past, even a scene inside the litter with the curtains drawn shut, but we cut these out due to time, so that we could spend more time on our main scenes. So in the end the final story board was the two characters overlooking the city, the city reveal and then the two characters watching the parade.

After storyboarding was completed we moved onto concepting. The concept for my scene eventually turned into the final version of my assets. While concepting we also put together a rough animatic. The concepting merged slightly with the making of our proxy assets as we took the layers of our Photoshoped concpets and arranged them in After Effects.

These proxies were then gradually replaced with the final versions of each asset, and when each scene was completed they were exported and added to a Premiere Pro file. I tried to get a audio student to make music for this project, but in the end I was forced to obtain some royalty free music, which is missing from the video embedded in this post for copyright reasons.

We did however get a graphic design student, who made our awesome title card. I would not have been able to make something like that. With everything done, the video was exported, and submitted to our lecturer before we posted it to YouTube.

A Reflection on Roles in the Creative Process

ON TRANSFERABLE SKILLS:

This trimester, it was far easier to communicate with a singular teammate, instead of trying to keep track of what two or three teammates are doing. We worked well together, with very few arguments and got everything done on time. When my teammate needed help I would respond the moment I was able to, and when I asked for help, he would do the same. We took all the advice given to us and used it to improve our project.

ON THE FINAL DELIVERABLE:

Both myself and my teammate were responsible for the scenes we concepted out, so myself with scene three and my teammate with scenes one and two. We both agreed that my scene had more aspects to it, so I should focus on it, while he focused on the first two scenes.

Neither of us were offically the project lead of this project, and that worked for us, since there were only two of us, it was better for us to discuss the project and come to an agreement than for one of us to make excecutive decisions.

If I had to do this project again… I think I would fight to keep the scenes we have and then work out new scenes to add. It would be a nice challenge to try and match the style again.

That’s all for this post, this blog marks the end of World Builder. There is a chance that I will have to go back and edit this blog, but that’s okay. Anything to get the learning outcome attached to this!

Hello dear readers! The third act of my progress report is here now. This week three had about 27 and a half hours recorded for Studio 3 projects.

In week three, for World Builder, I finished the storyboard for my team.

I also started doing concept art, however, I decided that Aravis didn’t need a front pose design since she is never facing the camera.

The eyes are really unnerving in the picture. With the clothes, I was trying to show that Aravis was wearing men’s clothes while still showing that she is female.

From the storyboard I created a very rough animatic, which only showed each frame with timing, no movement.

We also started looking at our specialisation projects, however it was just brainstorming what we would be doing for it and nothing more.

And finally, outside of assessment work, just for my body of work this trimester, I continued on my image “Hiding from the Maids” which I started last trimester.

In it I fixed Cordelia’s proportions slightly, and gave her base colour. I also added more detail to both Cordelia and Peony. I noticed that there were missing lines all over the place, so I rectified that.

That is all for my progress report, any other time that I haven’t covered was spent in class, learning. I’ll have a new report next Sunday, hopefully.

Welcome to the first edition of my progress journal, it’s purpose being to record how many hours I spend on doing work! This is actually last week’s time, I haven’t finished recording all the time for this week yet, that will be done either late Saturday or early Sunday. And for future reference, my week goes from Sunday to Saturday. Also, as a little bit of added fun, I’m going to try and call each blog for the progress journal something different in the introduction each week. This week is “First Edition”.

In the first week of trimester, nothing much happened in regards to creating anything, it was more discussion for the World Builder project, on which book would be done by the team, who was in each team, and then after all this, research into the chosen book and the author.

The book chosen by my partner and I is “The Horse and His Boy” by C.S. Lewis. We did consider doing Dracula or one of the Ranger’s Apprentice books, however we decided against them in the end.

I was the one to do the research into C.S. Lewis, while my teammate created our moodboard and wrote out our first pass of our synopsis for our project. I discovered a few things about Lewis that I hadn’t known before, such as the information that he served in the British army until he was medically discharged, and that he hadn’t always been Christain.

I also did our book deconstruction on our chosen scenes, the first couple of paragraphs for chapters 4 and 7, though my teammate did help me a little here.

Other than what I have mentioned already, the first week was just learning the ropes of Trello and Toggl so that I could use them for this trimester. There will be more interesting things in this week’s progress journal, I swear.

And for the last of my blog posts this trimester, I give you the post-mortem for my Specialisation Project. I wish that this had been the main project for this trimester, and that the group project had held less sway on our learning outcomes, then I’d spend more time researching animation techniques then worrying about how much time I have to complete a shot for someone. Though I will conceed to the point that many of our learning outcomes are all about following the project brief, going from pre to post preduction, and working with a team towards the final deliverable. Anyway, onto what this blog post is actually meant to be about.

My specialisation project this trimester focused on improving my 2D animation skills, and broadening my understanding of different techniques so that my animation look more believable. So in the end I endevoured to make this:

And this:

What went well, and why?

I think, in the end, what went well was my research. I found websites, articles and books that were able to give me information and recommendations that I could use and that I could easily read over several times to make sure I understood what I was doing. There were also plenty of sources of information to cross reference. The most helpful source was “The Animator’s Survival Kit” by Richard Williams, and I say that because it is a book, that I can physically hold, and bookmark. I can keep it open on the same page and not change tabs on my computer while I am animating.

Another thing that went well was the actual animation. I had a few problems with my laptop maxing out it’s memory usage, but that is such an easily fixed problem that it was merely an inconvienence. For once I didn’t focus on the look of my drawings and just focused on getting the movement right.

What didn’t go well, and why?

To continue off the animation part of the last question, there were some animations that I did focus on the look and not the movement, and the quality of these animations was blocky and very flat. This would be a case of I need quantity over quality, where I need to make more sketchy animation with good movement, rather than a few nicely lined animation with horrible movement. At the same time as having bad animation, focusing on the detail slowed down my work progress and I wasn’t able to do as much work as I had planned to do.

What else didn’t go well? My time management. With the Meet the Team project running past the due date, as well as cross-discipline work and my elective subject, I had a lot to juggle around my timetable, and I should have been able to do so, I just haven’t been able to. I haven’t worked out the right way for me to manage my time yet. I should listen to everyone who gives me a way to try out. My time management skills cut the time I spent on all of my projects, not just my specialisation.

One last thing that didn’t really work, was the study group that our lecturer had set up. Nothing happened in it, no one spoke after the initial silly chat, it was just dead, which defeated the purpose of the study chat group.

What would I do differently next time?

Next time? I would definitely start this project sooner, as to have some work ready by the time that we are starting to talk about it in class.

I would also make sure that I try and write down a to-do list, and some semblance of a schedule to follow. This should hopefully get more work done. With this, I shouldn’t feel like I’m stuck in a web of assessment.

One last thing I would do differently next time is ask for the opinions of my peers more, good advice comes from them, and ideas to improve your work. At least, that is what I have seen. If the lecturer sets up a group chat then I shall use it, ask for help and opinions, offer opinions and advice, and share the knowledge that I have aquired.

What I learnt during the project?

I learnt a few things during this project, such as lip sync and the beginnings of cloth animation. I also learnt the beginnings of facial expressions in 2D animation. But I also learnt different ways of extending my animation and making it shorter or faster. Such as giving key frames longer periods on screen, deleting some key frames that slow the animation down and are unnessasary for the movement.

One thing that I discovered was the limitations of Adobe Animate, where there isn’t a way to change the opacity of a layer. Or perhaps there is and I haven’t discovered it yet. There is no soft brush either, meaning I am stuck with hard lines.

From this I learnt about animating in Adobe Photoshop, where every layer is a new frame of animation. I didn’t get to test this myself, however I did watch one of my classmates doing this. It was very interesting to watch. Adding new frames to the animation also allows you to choose which layer is being used, so the layers don’t need to be in order. The order just makes the layers easier to find.

Future goals for skill development

My goal for future skill development, is to get to a point where I can have a few frames of smooth, coloured and shaded, finished 2D animation. To do this, I will most likely have to move on from Adobe Animate and find more animation software that gives me a greater range of tools to use, such as Anime Studio. I also want to get better at lip sync. I might grab some voiced lines from movies or cartoons that I can animate a character’s mouth to.

One last thing I learnt was the dire need that I have to learn how to draw a character that isn’t facing front on, I had much trouble drawing any character from any side view other than profile. I should do more drawings with characters in three quarter or around there side posing. It will make my animation better.

That’s all I have for this blog post. I enjoyed this trimester, and I hope to learn much more next trimester. Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and I’ll see you all next time.

Hey everyone! I’m back again today to finish off the last of my blog posts! First of which, is my cross-discipline post, and I am happy to say that my cross-discipline work went better than it did last trimester. While I still had some failures in trying to find projects to join, I managed to find something with help.

Wargantuan

This project by a group of Studio 1 games students needed 3D pixel models of their main races, the Celestiant, the Treehemoth, the Graviathan, and the Coalossus. I chose to make them their Treehemoth.

The description of the character that I recieved was basically a Treant, or a living tree, much like the treants from World of Warcraft or Tree-Rex from Skylanders Giants. So that’s what I looked at for reference.

I found all these treants to take inspiration from on Google (I could have grabbed them from the games they exist in, but I’d probably would have gotten distracted.) With these images I was able to make this:

Lots of vines. Vines were hard to do, I tried to remember about gravity while drawing them out. The program used to make this model is called MagicaVoxel. It’s a 3D pixel art program. I had a lot of fun with it while making the Treehemoth, experimenting with all the different tools, and whether it was better to use my drawing tablet or my mouse. Well, I never did work out how to use this program with a mouse, so everything was done using my Wacom tablet.

This was an interesting learning experience, and I’m glad I got to do it. The game ‘Wargantuan’ can be found here.

Other Attempts

A few of my other attempts at cross-discipine work were offers to make audio visualizers for audio students. At one point I asked if I could sit in on their recording session as well so that I might be able to revise for my Signal Flow test which I had coming up in my Audio elective subject. However I wasn’t able to do this before my test. One audio student who did reply to me did keep in contact for while before he stopped communicating. It was unfortunate, however I couldn’t keep trying with dwindling time left in the trimester.

I am happy to say that I was able to do cross-discipline work this trimester, despite the failed attempts at communication, and I am happy with my Treehemoth model. I look foward to next trimester, and I also hope I have the chance to experiment more with MagicaVoxel in future.

Hello everyone! I should have done this several weeks ago, but better late than never, right? Oh well, onto what I need to do.

An Indroduction to My Project

My specialisation project is focusing on improving my 2D animations, and to do this, I have decided to do many animation tests, and hopefully make at least one smooth animation loop, but also start animating more than just stick figures with basic attachments.

My before I started this project, my animations looked like this:

It’s blocky, and very simple, and there aren’t many attachments, like hair, clothes etc, and what attachments do exist are me guessing how they move and have no real research behind them. They are also very stiff.

By the end of this project I hope that my animations look something closer to this:

While chunky, it is spaced out really well. One of my favourite artists on DeviantArt is Aileen-Rose, who made the video, occassionally does a live stream, where we can ask her questions about her work. She also takes the time to respond to comments on her art and on her profile. The timing of this animation is great, and the expressions on the characters faces really emphasize the emotions and complement what is happening.

To reach these goals I needed to go back to the animation basics that I learnt back in my second trimester, and use the excercises that I was given then and work on my timing, my smooth in and smooth out, as well as my follow through. I also needed to research facial animation, and more to do with follow through. I also wished to start looking into lip sync and hair animation.

Ideas and Reference

The ideas that had at the start of this specialisation project were very ambitious and it was soon discouraged by my lecturer, who encouraged me to do something that would have been more obtainable. However, though I did listen to my lecturer, I shall share my original idea here.

My first idea was to try and animate a short scene from a book that has never been turned into a movie or tv series etc. And the book, well, books, that I turned my attention to for this were the “Black Magician Trilogy” by Trudi Canavan.

I thought it would have been interesting to try, so I collected a few reference images to add to my pitch, as well as draw my own short concept.

However, with that idea being pushed aside, I had to find new ideas for my new project. So I found all the animation exercises that were given to me back in my second trimester and looked though those to see what I could attempt again, I also came up with a few new ideas that I could make.

Ideas that I came up with were a small things like testing cloth animation, hair animation, and animating something from an old script that I wrote in Grade 10. I also wanted to test facial animation.

So I looked up reference for this. Here’s a few of them, so that I don’t fill up a scroll bar of images.

Workflow

All the artists that I have seen on DeviantArt have used the same workflow for their art, and I believe that I can convert that workflow from digital still images into animation. The artists that I have watched and asked will often draw the rough sketch, sometimes this is on paper, then sketch over that in a paint or photo manipulation program, such as PaintTool Sai or Adobe Photoshop. After they finish the sketch, if it is a commission for someone, then ocasionally send the sketch to their customer and ask their opinion. If the customer wants changes then the artist will do another sketch, then ask again, if not then they do the line art. I have seen some artists in their live streams colour the background before completing the line art. After the line art is finished then they will add the colour, then shading. Speedpaints on YouTube show this workflow well.

I use this workflow with my own images already, so I feel comfortable using it. I have improved on my workflow over the years by asking artists questions, watching speedpaints like the video above, and watching live streams where I can type questions and get them answered right away. Now I just have to translate it to work for animation. I believe it would look something like this:

I do not think I will be able to complete the whole workflow, just the first few steps, during this project, but just as I did with my art workflow, I shall continue to improve upon my animation workflow.

Practices and Techniques

As suggested by my lecturer, I picked up “The Animator’s Survival Kit” by Richard Williams, and it has been my bible for animation for the past weeks. It has many tips and tricks in it that I have looked at and tried to follow, and others that haven’t really stuck yet. I’m sorry Mr. Williams, but I’m afraid that I am unable to work in the dead silence that plagues my house sometimes. I need that music, even if the volume is only at 4%.

This book shows numerous ways to do one movement in animation, such as three catagories of sneaks, a recipe to a walk animation, and the different key poses in a run animation. There is also four pages of the same two frames of animation with different breakdown poses inbetween to change the way the expression is interpreted.

One of the most useful pieces of information that I found in this book were the pages on flexibility. “A great way to get flexibility is WHERE we’re going to place the BREAKDOWN drawing.” (Williams, 2009) These pages include the four pages of the same two faces with different breakdowns. The journey from the face going from one expression to another is all dependant on what emotion the animator wishes to convey. Such as making the mouth flat and bringing it up closer to the nose is a gulp, showing fear or aprehension, or making the smile larger and turning the head up slightly before going to the sad expression would be a show of false confidence. “This ‘simple overlap’ gives us action WITHIN an action. More ‘change’ – more life.” (Williams, 2009)

Another page that helped was the page with the breakdown of the run cycle. It helped me block out my own run cycle, though it isn’t perfect yet, and it has shown me the positions that I needed to draw for my animation.

I probably need to colour the arms to make their movement clearer.

This book has also helped my with my “Mr Amazing Invinci-Ball” skit.

Though it has no squash and stretch on it yet, it works in the stage that it is in now. I will get the squash and stretch finished on this one before my next blog post.

“The Animator’s Survival Kit” has been very useful to me so far, and I’m glad I was able to borrow it from SAE’s library.

Another source of information that I used for this project was the old lessons back from my second trimester at SAE, going back over all the principles of animation. It was very useful going back over the basics again. I don’t know how to reference the lessons, but I can reference the the YouTube playlist that each lesson was focused on.

The “12 Principles of Animation” video series by Alan Becker is a very good series to watch if you want to understand these principles quickly. The videos are only a few minutes long, but explain the topic well and get the point across easily.

I made animation tests that explored more into the principles, looking more into follow through and arcs.

I was looking at follow through here, trying to imagine the way that long hair would flow if someone was falling. It seems to have worked somewhat. Perhaps it would flap more wildly. I’m not in a position to ask someone to freefall safely however, so other animations, such as anime or cartoons will have to do for future research.

When looking at arcs, I tried my hand at a head turn again, going for a creature this time.

I think I made it a bit too fast, I could extend the two ends of the head turn so that there is a nice pause, breaking up the speed a bit. That would make this animation better.

There was a bit of research done into little details as well, I looked into cloth animation, to see how to animate cloth movement around a body. For this I found this tutorial on YouTube, that showed how to draw out the frames so that the cloth followed through more naturally.

When I tried to replicate this tutorial I tried on flatter cloth, just to get a feel for it first, and not have to worry about folds.

I don’t think I really succeeded here. It’s a bit stiff, and very unnatural. This requires a lot more research into the topic before I will be entirely happy. Though this is a good first attempt, it seems very surreal. I might have been restricted by having two separate animations in the same loop, hence limiting the fames I had to work with, since they had to match in length to make a complete cycle.

Another thing I looked at was facial animation, and I looked up several clips from different anime such as “Sword Art Online” and “Assassination Classroom”, where the characters faces are very expressive.

I also went onto Pinterest and found a board full of different expressions for animation. So with the help of a reflective surface, I found one of the expressions on the Pinterest board and twisted my face to look like it, then tried to animate the expression in a suitable fashion.

There’s something off about this animation that I can’t place my finger on, I think that generally in animation tears aren’t looped, and just run down once and stay, signifying an endless stream of tears.

Looking into expressions also closely ties into lip sync which I researched a bit. The expression on the character’s face can change the meaning behind a sentence, just as the tone of voice that is used. The “Animation Notes #9” page of the Center of Animation and Interactive Media website explains the importance of body language in a character as well, the unnamed author says ‘give your character something to do during the dialogue sequence.’ (“Lip Sync Animation”, n.d.) Even the smallest guesture can show something about the character’s personality while they are talking, accenting details that give life to the character. The author of this webpage also states that ‘the delivery of the dialogue during recording will often dictate where these accents should fall.’ As such, you wouldn’t give furiously spoken dialogue to a depressed expression, just as a cheerful grin doesn’t match dead toned lines.

One article that has really helped was “10 best animation tips & tricks” by Kenny Roy on the CreativeBloq website. These are very useful points, some of them I discovered first hand how useful they were, such as ‘a mirror is a dangerous thing’. Roy states that it is very dangerous to use in lip sync, but in any animation, I have discovered, it is dangerous, as when you slow down your movement to try and capture it, you are far more likely to overexagerate the movement or even underexagerate it, making it less natural.

The last tip on this list is ‘do more of less’. And it suggests doing more shorter shots for practice, and to practice the length of shot that you are most likely to encounter in the industry, which Roy says “will rarely be more than 10 seconds.” I find this is a very good piece of advice that I believe my lecturers and old teachers have been trying to teach me for quite a while. My apologies to them.

Different Animating Software

During this project I also started looking at different animation software that I could use, other than Adobe Animate, to work around some of the limitations in Animate, such as brushes with very few size options and no opacity on layers. The first thing I researched in this was animating in Adobe Photoshop, which is what Aileen-Rose uses to create her animations. I found a tutorial on YouTube that explained the basics to animating in Photoshop. Hamilton Cline, the video’s author, goes into detail about video layers in Photoshop. I did manage to find the timeline window in Photoshop, while experimenting with one of my images that I have many layers on.

I haven’t experimented further with this however, choosing instead to look for more software that I could use, but since I already own Photoshop, this seems to be the most viable option.

Another program that I found was Moho (Anime Studio), for $69.99. This program, in the Debut 12 version, allows for 2D bone rigging, contains a window that shows every variation of a body part so that they can be changed between quickly between the different poses, and tools that assist in the freehand drawing. Anime Studio also has a setting to do automatic lip syncing. This feature apparently lets you load in a sound file and Anime Studio calculates the rest. Anime Studio has a review on the Top Ten Reviews webpage, where it praised for having both beginner and pro programs. “The beginner program has a collection of tools that are tailored to novice animators. It covers the basics and gives you what you need to build a foundation in the art of animation.” (“The Best 2D Animation Software | Top Ten Reviews”, 2017)

Top Ten Reviews’ second listed animation software is Toon Boom. “Toon Boom has a huge and versatile toolbox for animators that provides many choices to customize the look and feel of your project.” (“The Best 2D Animation Software | Top Ten Reviews”, 2017)

Toon Boom Harmony has many different animation tools to use, and looks like it is a great program for animators. It has a 21 day free trial, which is a tad strange, since most free trials are either 7 or 30 days. Toon Boom, like Adobe, is a subscription based program, starting at $15 per month for the Essentials pack, $38 for the Advanced pack, and $73 for the Premium. In comparison to Anime Studio, Toon Boom has a much neater appearance and appears to be easier to navigate.

Of these programs, Photoshop still seems to be the easiest to learn, mainly because I already have it, and am paying for it. Though in future, these other programs will be good to look at, even recommend to others looking for animation software.

This has been a very long blog post, perhaps not my longest, but still long. I hope I haven’t killed your interest. I’m sorry that this is so late and so long, this blog was meant to be in two parts, but I chose to place both parts in one post due to it being so late. So I thank-you for reading this long post, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.